How to Make Decorated Starfish Cookies

I took my kids camping last week. Camping is basically a dirt nap sandwiched between two tornadoes. There's all the planning and food buying and the filling and the stuffing of bags with clothes that are actually all wrong for the weather that is coming for you, only you don't even know it because all seven weather channels that you checked said it would be warm and sunny. And you're up ridiculously late finishing the laundry so you have all those so very necessary perfect items and up early putting all the food in a cooler with a giant block of ice that is already started to join that great ocean in the sky and you somehow manage to corral all those little bodies into one singular vehicle only to have everyone wish they could be anywhere but that vehicle for the next 3 to a million hours or so.

And then you get there and the kids explode out of the car like they've never breathed air before. Ever. In their entire lives because clearly you live on a submarine and never arrange play dates because of your own awkward social skills. (Shame on you!) You've got exactly 3 seconds to grab hold of them before they are running in the direction of every possible outdoor hazard known to man, including their own feet. It takes forever to figure out the tent. And the fire. And of course, you have no idea where that foil packet dinner ended up and hopefully, hopefully, HOPEFULLY it's not currently located on the counter at home. Nobody ever sleeps. (Thank goodness for all that late night cookie training -- I was in top shape for the "stay up all night and never sleep again" event.)

And by the next morning, everyone is tired and cold and hates every ounce of food you brought unless it was fried and covered in chocolate. And you actually didn't bring anything fried *or* covered in chocolate. My children pretty much existed on stubborn and ornery for 3 days straight.

(PS -- "ORNERY?!" How is that really how that word is spelled? I feel like that word is a bad joke gone wrong. Like someone forgot to jump out and yell, "Gotcha!!" and now we're stuck with it all because someone has bad timing. We need to fix that. Do you suppose it's a petition kind of thing or more of an underground movement kind of thing? How would one go about researching that, do you suppose? I'm all for "awnry." What do you say?)

And then we got home and everyone fell into their beds for the rest of their lives. Except me. I turned into Cinderella somehow and worked late into the night ridding our home and clothing of that stale smoke smell. Can you even imagine? ME doing laundry. FIVE loads in one day. Folded and everything. It's like the world has come to an end. That is what camping does to me. It makes me lose my ever loving mind and start doing things like laundry.

So let's look at beach cookies some more instead of thinking about laundry ever again. Or camping. Or foil packet dinners that everyone refuses to eat. ( I am not even kidding you -- they were even refusing the peanut butter and jam sandwiches I made them!!) Enough of that. Back to cookies.

1. Grab some medium consistency tan icing and a #3 tip. Pipe a large, medium, and small dot of icing on each arm of the starfish. I like to keep my tip close to the cookie and squeeze the icing out around it so it gets all puffy. Let these dots dry overnight.
2. Thin down some of your tan icing to a watery consistency. We're talking 1-2 seconds until a drip melts back into the surface. Use a large food brush to paint the icing all over the top of the starfish. You could also pour some onto the cookie and use the brush to spread it around. Pipe another set of dots on top of the first set of dots.
3. Spoon some crushed up graham crackers (or over baked cookies) on top of the wet icing. (In case you are wondering...these are actually over baked cookies. I baked them an additional 3-4 minutes before letting them cool and crushing them in my food processor. They look just like graham cracker crumbs!)
4. Shake off the excess crumbs and let the cookie dry. Simple enough you can handle them after any camping trip!

LilaLoa

The Cookie Artist

Georganne Bell is the mess maker and cookie decorator behind the cookie blog LilaLoa. Obsessed with color and texture, she has been experimenting and creating with cookies and icing since 2010. She also gives plenty of unsolicited advice and occasionally does laundry before it becomes strictly necessary.

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